1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication apparatus connected through a network to at least one another communication apparatus, in which character messages transmitted from other communication apparatuses are received and displayed, and character messages are inputted and transmitted to other communication apparatuses, and a communication program storage medium incorporated into a computer system, which stores therein a communication program for causing the computer system to operate as the above-mentioned communication apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, a computer contributes to a supplement to a personal ability, such as a calculation, a document editing, etc. On the other hand, recently, a processing ability of the computer is improved and a network comes into wide use as seen in the recent internet boom, and thus there is raised such a need that a computer is used to support a group work.
One of the most important things, when a group work is performed, is to contribute to smoothing of understanding each other among groups. Hitherto, contributing to smoothing of understanding each other is implemented in the form of an electronic mail system, NetNews and the like. However, in future, it seems that there will be important understanding each other according to a so-called chat system that a plurality of user terminals are always connected to a network so that the users can always interchange messages through the network. A merit of the chat system resides in the point that messages can be interchanged readily with conversation languages, while it is performed on a character basis. Thus, as compared with an environment involved in only a mail and news, it is possible to greatly contribute to smoothing of understanding each other.
According to the above-mentioned chat system, however, even if messages, which include information of the states of users, for example, "I leave my seat for a conference", "I will go to a library", etc., are fed onto a network constructing the chat system, those messages would be carried away with the passage of time together with other messages, and thus the user information would be lost. Accordingly, while adoption of the chat system may contribute to smoothing of understanding each other, there is associated with such a problem that a lot of information is not always effectively utilized.